My Bottom-10 Wii Games

Alrighty, time finally for my Bottom-10 Wii Games. I’ve been dreading doing this list since the Wii already gets so much unnecessary hate. But obviously, there were some genuinely terrible games on the system (which is kind of inevitable when you’re the market leader of your console generation).

Once again, these are just my opinions, so if a game you like happens to be on the list, don’t take it too seriously. Just like with a lot of my bottom-10s, I’m including not just flat-out terrible games, but also games which were let-downs of some description.

10. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Skyward Sword may have not been a terrible game, but a let-down it was never the less. Skyward Sword is supposed to be the prequel to end all prequels in the Zelda series by explaining the origins of Hyrule and how Link and Zelda got their respective roles as guardians of said realm. And true, this game has some colourful locales, cool dungeons and even really beautiful cutscenes.

However, there’s just so much wrong with the gameplay alone which makes Skyward Sword way more frustrating than it needs to be. I’m not talking about the motion-controls here, those are fine. What I’m talking about are stupid superfluous features like Link running out of breath and your shields breaking. Neither of these needed to be a feature in a Zelda game, especially when most of your shields are so fucking frail you’ll end up having to complete entire dungeons without one.

I also didn’t like how the game cheated slightly on locations by basically having you to revisit every location at some point in the game. The first time it was actually kinda cool. By the third time (the spirit world runs) it was honestly getting repetitive. The cast is uninteresting (except for Impa) and while the story-line started great, it resorted to Zelda-series clichés by the end which was quite the feat considering Ganon isn’t even a character in the story. And the Imprisoned? A total derp and definitely not a monster I expected to go up against three frickin’ times throughout the game.

But to be fair, Skyward Sword had a lot of good features as well, but I’ve honestly never been this disappointed at a Zelda game since Zelda 2: Adventure of Link. Maybe my expectations were a smidge high, but I still think that if you want a good Zelda game for the Wii, you should just get Twilight Princess instead.

9. Endless Ocean

Sometimes I’m a victim of my own habits. I recognise that I have a bad habit of picking safe-choices when I buy games and occasionally I end up regretting not being more bold in my choices. When I heard there was a deep-sea exploration game coming out for the Wii, I decided I was going to give it a shot.

Mind you, at the time I was so jaded by the over-flow of JRPGs, military shooters and other such nonsense that didn’t raise my interest. I just wanted something new and fresh. I wanted plunge headfirst into the unknown and give a chance to a game I knew nothing about in a genre I hadn’t really experienced before. And it was boring as hell…

So yeah, Endless Ocean is definitely not a bad game and it’s really my own fault for not thinking ahead before I got this game. For somebody looking for a more serene non-action oriented title, this game might actually be a fairly pleasant surprise. I on the other hand expected (perhaps unfairly) something more which is the reason I was let down. Again, it’s not a terrible game so I can’t put it up too high, but a let-down for me personally.

8. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Remembering my Bottom-5 GameCube games list, you will probably remember that I am not a fan of the Super Smash Bros. series in the very least. I just think Smash Bros. is a terrible fighting game with terrible controls. The only aspect about it that I even mildly enjoy is the cross-over element between Nintendo franchises, but you may all understand that I wasn’t particularly hyped for Brawl.

To its credit though, I loved the Subspace Emissary mode. Though the gameplay was still terrible, the platforming aspect was sort of nice and, of course, my favourite thing about these segments were cutscenes. Honestly, Brawl’s story-mode was very impressive in how it managed to tell an epic tale without a single line of dialogue from any of the characters. It honestly gave the thing a bit of a Captain N vibe, which was just fine by me.

However, that’s where Brawl’s positive attributes end. You can unlock every character in the game just by playing Subspace Emissary (since you have to control everyone during the story mode at some point) which honestly gave you zero incentive to play the regular arcade-mode. That’s just weak design because I might have actually continued to play the game for a while longer if that wasn’t the case. But that doesn’t change the fact that after beating Subspace Emissary I barely ever come back to this game.

7. Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon

One thing you can say about me, my lack of appreciation for RPGs isn’t from a lack of trying. This game was actually a birthday present and I played for quite a while before giving up on it. This is a weird spin-off from the Final Fantasy games where you control Chocobo on a quest to do… eh, stuff. I seriously can’t remember the storyline. Only that the bad guy you thought was the bad guy became good guy for a while and maybe something with Moogles. Yeah, no, I have no clue.

The reason I kept playing Chocobo’s Dungeon was actually because I got sucked in by the cute art-style and charming setting. The game was a little slow-paced but I actually enjoyed it for quite a while. In the proverbial dungeons, you have to pass several levels while battling increasingly powerful enemy monsters and while hopefully discovering useful items. I got pretty far into the game until I finally got stuck because Chocobo wasn’t beefed enough to take on the enemies.

This is the problem with most RPGs. No matter how likable the characters and settings, no matter how charmed you are by the story and no matter how much you would want to finish the game, nothing brings it to a screeching halt faster than the knowledge that you have to level grind. Honestly, the battles were the most boring part of the game, so when I realised I’d had to do them even more just to be able to progress, I decided to cut my losses and give up. That’s a badly motivated game right there.

6. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2

It’s rather sad how for the sheer amount of Dragon Ball Z games out there, none of them appear to be any good. Every single one is just a mindless button masher where you have fun for a little while just because it’s Dragon Ball and you’re tearing shit up as Piccolo or someone else, but eventually you realise that you’re playing garbage and have to stop.

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is no different. To its credit, you get to fly around freely in the battle arenas, though you also lose your opponents very easily and have to go looking for them which is a bit of a pain. There’s a lot of production quality with the special moves and they’re not even that difficult to activate. Quite the contrary, you’re probably going to find the game a complete cakewalk with enemies posing little to no challenge.

That doesn’t change the fact that Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is a terrible game. The cutscenes which tell the story-line are super lazy (sure, fans know the story already – it would still be nice to have at least clips from the anime to illustrate them), despite the cell-shading most of the character models are super derpy and the game is quite the glitch-fest with you flying around in all directions. I’d say this game at least has a “so bad it’s good” quality, but definitely wasn’t a great fighting game.

5. Epic Mickey

I was sort of excited for this Disney release/gritty reboot of Disney’s lovable Mouse mascot. And to be fair, I got pretty far in the game and even enjoyed for brief periods. Mainly what I liked about the game was the cooky setting and all the homages to classic old school Walt Disney characters. Unfortunately, everything else was really hit and miss.

The graphics weren’t bad for what they were, but the paint-brush painting mechanic was somehow a little badly conceived. The controls kept giving me trouble almost all the way through the game and even the platforming got quite tedious after a while. Also, the further I went, the more confusing the level designs got, until I was just completely lost on what I was supposed to do about certain enemies or even what I was supposed to do at the location I was at. This lack of exposition and the increasingly chaotic nature of the game finally got me to give up.

Epic Mickey wasn’t a terrible idea for a game and I honestly wanted it to be better. However, it was so poorly executed as a 3D platforming title that it’s almost inexcusably cack-handed and borderline broken.

4. Sexy Poker

I wont make any excuses for this one. Gameloft’s Sexy Poker was a dirty mobile game that was ported over to the WiiWare as a downloadable release. Remembering back to Bubble Bath Babes on the Bottom-10 NES Games list, Sexy Poker proves once again that if it has boobs people will play it.

In the same vein as Bubble Bath Babes, Sexy Poker actually isn’t a terrible version of video-poker, but as tends to be the case with Poker video-games, your strategies for winning are fairly simplistic and any game where you need huge amounts of luck are just not that much fun. Also, the voice-acting was pretty terrible.

So why is the game even in the Bottom-5 for this list. As ashamed as I am to admit it, Sexy Poker is easily one of the most pointless downloadable games for the Wii because it lacks the essential thing that probably helped sell the original. The WiiWare version has been sanitized and does not include any nudity. That just sends out mixed messages and turns this into a mildly titillating but ultimate a really boring game.

3. Mega Man 10

As mentioned in the second 10 Wii Games list, I actually liked Mega Man 9 a lot despite the pet peeves I had with it. When Capcom announced a sequel out of the blue, I was honestly not all that excited. I think I tried to have a mildly optimistic attitude about the thing. After all, this meant Capcom was probably going to keep making more Mega Man games, but ultimately Capcom let its fans down in more ways than one.

Mega Man 10’s biggest problems are A.) its ridiculous difficulty and B.) its almost uncharacteristic blandness as a Mega Man game. The difficulty was quite infuriating. Granted, I started playing as Proto Man just so I could use the super-shot and play with a full complement control scheme, but ended up getting my ass kicked because of Proto Man’s terrible stamina. It finally got so bad that I resorted to playing through the game on Easy mode just to see the ending.

The Easy-mode by the way was the worst joke of them all. It is practically impossible to die in Easy mode. Even if by some miracle you manage to fall into a pit (considering they’re all covered up) or take damage from enemies, there is always a power-up at the end of the level to fill up your energy and weapon energy. And the bosses barely attack you. The Normal (/Easy) mode in Mega Man 2 was a little over-generous too, but not to the same ridiculous degree as this.

Then there was the horrible blandness. The Robot Masters were just laughable, each seemingly based around some everyday object with Strike Man (a baseball with hands and feet) being by far the laziest of them all. The much derided Sheep Man was actually the most inventive looking of the bunch. And then there was the soundtrack which, while not terrible, just didn’t sound at all memorable. Solar Man’s stage was about the only theme I thought was any good (and that music during the rain-scene in the Skull Fortress), but the whole thing just seemed to suffer from a lack of effort.

Capcom made what is possibly the worst of the official Mega Man titles. Mega Man 9 was cute, challenging and fun. Mega Man 10 is just bad.

2. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

As I mentioned before in my Bottom-5 Xbox 360 games list, I honestly feel that Capcom doesn’t know how to make good 2.5D fighting games. Also, I realise Tatsunoko is an anime studio which probably has a rich history. Still, this was a cross-over which in its obscurity wasn’t even funny. I think the only enjoyment I had with the game was getting to beat the shit out of a giant robot with a broom as Roll.

My biggest gripe are the jumpy controls. Or rather the jumping controls since characters almost manage to disappear from the screen. Nothing reacts the way you’d expect in a fighting game. The controls are just slip-shotty and as a result (much like Budokai Tenkaichi) the game begins to feel like a brainless button-masher since normal fighting game strategies don’t apply. I also felt zero incentive to play as the Tatsunoko characters, which in turn just made me bored with the game very quickly.

The locales and music were equally uninteresting except for the themes from the Capcom characters which I recognised. And the ending animations were just still images which, if anything, was super lazy. You would think that if Capcom was going to team up with an animation studio, they could at least get animated cutscenes. Over-all, this was just a unenjoyable title. Granted, if you like Tatsunoko then you might get a kick out of the game, but it’s not an enjoyable fighter in the very least.

1. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

Rail-shooters are the most pointless, brain-dead, lazy and inexcusable tripe in video-game format. They are a shooting range in video-game format and I’ve never understood why people think these games should continue to exist past browser flash games. Once you’ve played Duck-Hunt you’ve played them all.

During the Wii generation I started to get more and more into the Resident Evil game series (I was already a fan of the movies) and I didn’t really know anything about Umbrella Chronicles until I played it. The game basically takes Resident Evil 0, 1 and 3 and turns them all into interactive shooting galleries. My biggest complaint is that none of the enemies seem to die from just one bullet, even if you aim for the head (which to me would actually make sense). Instead you have to mash on either the A or B button relentlessly which ultimately just made my arm throb within minutes of playtime. That’s not fun, that’s tantamount to torture.

Plus, I think the shooting-gallery gameplay style completely undermines the main point of Resident Evil which is the isolated, cold and creepy atmosphere. With you just constantly blasting zombies, you really can’t take in the ambiance. In other words, this game takes everything awesome out of the Resident Evil games its adapting and just replaces it with mind-numbing button-mashing (are you noticing a theme here?).